Study Says Airlines Can Boost Revenues By … Being Nice?

We can’t show you the clip here because of five-, six-, seven-, even 10-letter curse words, but in the B-movie cult classic “Roadhouse,” Patrick Swayze gives an eloquent speech to his fellow bar bouncers about being nice.

The theory being, of course, that you being nice would lead to the patrons being nice.

Now a new study suggests that if airline employees would only be nicer, they could boost ancillary revenue.

No, we’re not making this up.

“Boost Ancillary Revenue Through Empathy, Competence, and Kindness” was released today by the IdeaWorksCompany, in association with CarTrawler.

It suggests that one of the more reviled industries in America – airlines were on par with cable television companies and the Internal Revenue Service in a survey by the American Customer Satisfaction Index last year – could go a long way with a few more niceties.

The report “explores how airline management teams can work together for the greater good of their customers, employees, and investors,” IdeaWorks said. “Call it a back-to-basics mantra, but sometimes in a technology riddled world, we all can benefit from a few therapeutic reminders to reset our moral compasses. By using the inherently human qualities of empathy, competence, and kindness, the report offers advice to airline management teams to boost ancillary revenue.”

In particular, the study said airlines need to:
- Understand the perspective of other departments before adding a la carte services.
- Front line employees provide a vital source of intelligence; talk to them before adding anything.
- Empathy is a crucial tool of diplomacy, and ancillary revenue leadership requires diplomatic skills.
- Enlightened airlines should have employees book and buy tickets like their clients.
- Competence has a natural enemy, and that’s complexity; improve existing a la carte items.
- Don’t invite regulators to become involved in your business by failing to fix systemic problems.
- Untangle consumer confusion by dedicating corporate resources to simplifying self-service.

Of course, as you can see below, Patrick Swayze also said to be nice until it was time not to be nice, so who knows where this is going. (Warning: some PG-13 language here.)

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